Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

In North Carolina, more students drop out in the 9th grade than any other year. At Western Guilford High School in Greensboro, School leaders took a hard look at the 9th grade and decided to try something different. Alison Jones reports on Western\’s new Freshman Academy for our series North Carolina Voices: Studying High School.

Today we begin a week long visit to Western Guilford High School in Greensboro as a part of our North Carolina Voices: Studying High School series. We\’re focusing on Western because it is fairly typical of High Schools in the rest of the state in terms of size, demographics and test scores. Deborah George reports.

In many parts of North Carolina, poverty and a lack of education go hand in hand. That is especially true in the rural, predominantly African American Northeastern part of the state. In Northampton County, nearly a third of the children live in poverty and more than a third of the adults have no high school diploma. But a new charter school in the town of Gaston aims to break the cycle. So far, it is succeeding and also making waves. Leda Hartman reports as part of our series North Carolina Voices: Studying High School.

High Schools across North Carolina succeed or fail for many reasons. In rural school districts, the reasons for failure often have a lot to do with location. The biggest challenge for Northwest Halifax High School in Northeastern North Carolina is attracting experienced teachers. The school is in Littleton – far from major employers, banks or even big grocery stores. Some of the students have to travel more than an hour each way to get to school. And district leaders are under increasing pressure to raise standards and make sure students get the education they need. Leoneda Inge reports for our series “North Carolina Voices: Studying High School.”

What do teacher expectations have to do with student performance? When it comes to the achievement gap, perhaps a lot. An experiment at Mount Tabor High School in Winston-Salem has led the school to rethink how it places students into advanced level classes, and the experiment is now being exported to the county\’s nine other high schools. As part of our series \”North Carolina Voices: Studying High School\” Michelle Johnson reports.